


One Of Them

by Heliosthetroll



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Anxiety, Not in explicit detail though, Other, Panic Attacks, This is just Virgil's life story I'm sorry he's my fav
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 01:48:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20268034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heliosthetroll/pseuds/Heliosthetroll
Summary: Virgil Sanders is a part of Thomas Sanders, but his life is much different from Thomas's.





	One Of Them

**Author's Note:**

> Hahaha! I return with another story not a month apart from my last one! And for a fandom that's not Homestuck! It's a miracle! Anyway, I love Virgil and this exists only because of that lol hope you all enjoy.

It all started when I was born. Well. Born may not be the best word to use. I didn’t come into existence the same way most people did. Certainly not the same way Thomas did. No. Rather I just, popped into the world of Thomas’s mind when Thomas was about seven. I’m told some form of the emotions I represent existed before that but not in the same way as they did afterward. At the time I was confused and alone and scared. I didn’t know who I was or where I was or what was happening. All I knew was that it was dark, I was alone, and I felt scared. Deceit was the first to find me there in what I would soon be told was deep in Thomas’s subconscious where he and, though not at the time since he wasn’t ‘born’ yet, Remus live. I didn’t trust him at first. Who would be as a scared seven-year-old with no idea what was going on? But he told me I could always trust him and after some coaxing, I began to believe him. The panic I was going through, and would later learn I had caused Thomas to go through, slowly subsided and I calmed down. Deceit was there for me the entire time and after a bit longer he introduced himself properly, he never did tell me his real name and at the time he called himself something different though I don’t remember what in order to hide his true nature from me, and tell me he’d formed just two years earlier but that he’d be happy to teach me what he knew. I already had some knowledge and memories from Thomas, it’s part of why I believed Deceit in a lot of what he told me despite my fear, some of what Deceit said I could countercheck against memories from when Thomas was scared and find them to be true. At the time we gave me the name Paranoia and I told Deceit I felt like I was Virgil but that was about all I knew about myself. The rest I’d learn as Thomas discovered things.

Deceit was all I had for a long time. We didn’t leave the dark often after all. The lies Thomas could tell were not complex at the time and he didn’t lie often enough to pull Deceit away often but every time he did leave I was terrified there in the darkness alone. Sure Thomas got scared and I would be pulled up myself sometimes but I was always alone then too, at least for a little bit. I’d be brought up into the world Thomas lived in and see what was around him and we’d flee somewhere safer until Deceit would come along with his sweet little lies and comforts, telling me I was safe and Thomas was too and then I’d calm and go away again, back to the darkness we called home. I’d always had some kind of connection with Thomas even when I didn’t really know him exactly, I was a part of him so I knew him but at the same time I hadn’t really spoken to him much if you get what I mean, and I always felt kind of protective of him in some way, wanting him to be safe. But that was all I knew for a while. My room in the dark and Deceit’s room in the dark and then Thomas. But then I met the others.

The way I remember it I had been spending time with Deceit like usual when I felt that grip of fear and anxiety, though we didn’t know that’s what the feeling was at the time, and I was pulled away up to visit Thomas. He and I were both about nine at the time. And that’s when I met Patton. Or as I knew him at the time, Morality. Thomas’s fears weren’t what they normally were. He wasn’t worried about something hurting him or anything he’d seen accidentally on TV that he shouldn’t have. Instead, he was worried about a friend he’d wronged. He’d accidentally hurt them earlier in the day and Patton was trying to comfort him that it had been an accident and he hadn’t done anything wrong but Thomas and I were both afraid that he’d lost his friend forever because of it. It was a stupid fear with no signs of realism but it was a fear all the same. A paranoid thought we shared. I couldn’t bear the thought of Thomas losing friends because well, I hated being alone. It was scary to be alone. I saw Patton and I had no clue who he was or why he was here and he saw me and he tells me he was confused too. He knew Thomas had fear and he’d met Deceit before, often fought with him actually, but he had no idea I existed and Deceit had never told me about Patton before. Patton was incredibly kind though. He saw I was scared and his first instinct wasn’t to question me on who I was or what I was doing there but to try and comfort me, calm me down. I calmed a little but I didn’t trust Patton, not at all. He was new and scary to me in my already worked up state. I managed to tell him I was Paranoia and he seemed surprised but it was then that Logan arrived, deciding enough was enough and it was time to shut me down. He was… Well, he wasn’t unkind but he was a lot more blunt and emotionless and intimidating than Patton was. Still did the falsehood thing too which let me tell you loud sudden noises do not help a panic attack. I was desperate to escape that situation I really truly was. I was so desperate that I just started to pretend I agreed with Logan to get him to go away. So began a streak of pleasing others before myself in order to keep them from being aggressive. 

Things were eventually resolved without any of our help but rather Thoma’s parents and I retreated back to Deceit who after calming me down explained to me that those two were Patton and Logan, Morality and Logic as he knew them by and told me they were. He also told me of their third, Roman or at the time I knew him as Creativity, who hadn’t shown up. Roman and Remus hadn’t split just yet at the time but Roman was showing signs of instability and rapid mood swings between the two sides of himself as Thomas was confused over good and bad creativity. The description Deceit gave me of the unsplit Creativity was terrifying in its unpredictableness. I nearly had another attack just thinking about him. But Deceit assured me none of them ever came down to the darkness so as long as I stayed there with him I’d be safe. And I trusted him. So I never left unless I had to.  


I met Roman maybe three times total before the split but each time I met him I was left more scared than when I’d arrived. Thomas had just turned ten when it happened. Roman split one night while Thomas was staring at a picture he was drawing and contemplating things. Everyone knew it happened though for different reasons. Those up closer to the surface in the light knew because they witnessed it and well, I don’t envy them exactly but the way we discovered it wasn’t much better really. We found out when Remus suddenly appeared in the darkness with a grin on his face and blood on his clothing I would later learn from Roman was his own. Or rather what had been their shared blood I suppose. Already he was happy to exist to cause troubling thoughts and boy did I hate that. He was most of what had scared me about the unsplit Creativity. Wild, unpredictable, and always coming up with less than pleasant thoughts he was never afraid to share at the drop of a hat. He absolutely terrified me from day one and things didn’t get better as time went on and he learned of more and more weird creepy things to talk about. Deceit accepted him in though just like he had me and he didn’t take long to tell us he was Creativity and also Remus. I didn’t like it but I was stuck with Remus if I didn’t want to run the risk of being hurt by Roman or Logan so I stayed with Deceit and Remus in the dark where I could hide and run and feel safe. I was one of them.

Then came the day Thomas had a panic attack in school so bad that he was taken home and then to therapy not long after. I remember it like it was yesterday. Thomas was fifteen and we had already been having a bad day. Remus had given Thomas nightmares all night with no cutting in from Roman and that was not good for his mood but even worse today was a big test both he and I were stressed over. Logan tried reassuring Thomas he’d do fine because he’d studied well and Patton tried to reassure him that it didn’t matter what he got but I and my fear were stronger that day. Thomas was anxious through most of the morning and when it came time for the test Logan could barely get in around my fears to the point where it was practically a self-fulfilling procephy. Thomas knew enough to pass on his own but there were still a lot of questions we didn’t know that caused us panic as I stood looking over his shoulder while he worked that Logan couldn’t help us logic out. So that threw his day further into a bad spiral right then and there and it wasn’t even lunch yet. Lunch helped a little, Thomas got to sit and talk and eat with his friends but I was still there, still tingling at his mind with worry and fear the entire time. I don’t think I had ever been out in the world for that long before and it’s only rarely happened since. Logan, Patton, and Roman did all show up though at that point but all they did was attack me. Or at least Logan and Roman did. Patton was always too soft for that but he didn’t have enough influence to really do much at the time. Logan and Roman continually put me down for ruining things and generally were angry at me for quite a while well Patton had to focus on keeping Thomas from showing his distress in front of his friends while we fought, me having grown to be a bit aggressive and sassy as a self-defense mechanism as Thomas reached his teen years. It was then that a school bully started to approach Thomas with a smirk and well. We never really learned what he was going to do because my terror allowed me just enough control time to have Thomas sprinting away with the excuse of going to the bathroom where he then curled into a bathroom stall in the corner and started to faintly cry. The emotions were too strong at that point. It only angered the other sides more and we back to fighting but Patton then had Thomas call his mom about what he was experiencing and she came to get him. 

After that panic attack, Thomas’s mom had him put into therapy as she was worried about him after witnessing all his mental distress and the therapist soon told Thomas what he had was called anxiety. I was there with Thomas at the time because he was nervous about the whole thing and I was too but when I heard the diagnosis it was like something clicked into place and my name just… switched. It wasn’t like a voluntary choice or like something a trans person might experience being called their real name for the first time. No, it was something distinctly different. Like… Like I knew I was for the first time. Like I had solid facts for what and who I was and that I wasn’t… I don’t even know what to call it. Invalid is the closest thing I have but it wasn’t quite that. It was bigger than that. But it was at that moment that I realized I was Anxiety and after that, I left to go think about things. It didn’t take long for the news to spread of Thomas’s diagnosis and from what Deceit later told me it didn’t just click for me but everyone that Anxiety was who I was now. Everyone just kinda knew that calling me Paranoia just wouldn’t fly anymore and from that moment on everyone, even Thomas, just never used that word again. Well, Thomas still used it when I wasn’t around as to not seem weird by avoiding it but that was mostly because of my influence anyway so that was different. Realizing I was Anxiety was when I started wondering more about what I really was and who I really was and started to wonder about a lot of different things about myself and my relationships including the one thing I tried not to wonder about the most but kept coming back to. Was I really one of them?

Things didn’t even out per se but there wasn’t anything too noticeable in Thomas’s life really. No major events that defined me or stick out to me now. Well besides Thomas’s realization he was gay and his coming out after that. But that was more Thomas’s thing that I just played a large role in because it was nerve-wracking. Thomas eventually started making videos and eventually became famous for it. I wasn’t a fan at first but I guess I just kinda got used to it. It still made me nervous, even does now sometimes, but it just became one of the daily anxieties rather than a world-ending event I was pulled up for each and every time. And eventually, the Sanders Sides videos started being made. We still don’t know exactly how that works, why we can be recorded by them when usually even in other videos we can’t be seen, but just for those videos and some of Thomas’s shorter skits, we can be seen. It’s weird but we’ve gotten used to that too. It was through those videos that Thomas made many discoveries about himself and the rest of us about ourselves too and it was through them that I spent less and less time around Deceit and Remus in the dark and more and more time around Thomas and Patton and Logan and even Roman. Slowly I started to wonder. Was I one of them?

I didn’t believe I could be for the longest time if only because Patton was really the only one who liked me. Logan tolerated me but he was still intimidating if less so then he had been when we’d been children and Roman clearly despised me. Patton was soft and sweet but honestly, Patton had always been kind to me. I think he always sensed that I didn’t mean any harm, even if I sometimes caused harm. Probably something to do with him being Morality or something. I don’t know. What I do know though is that Patton was one of the main reasons I stuck through those videos for as long as I did despite everyone else. That and well... Thomas’s fans seemed to love me for one reason or another, almost as much if not more so than Patton did. I still don’t understand how or why to this day but they really did love me. It really kept me encouraged that being in those videos was worth it for a long time. 

But slowly Logan and especially Roman started to wear on me. No offense to Roman, he has good reasons not to like me and I don’t really blame him even if he was harsh and he’s been getting better slowly but surely, but he was pretty harsh on me. And eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore. So I cut myself out of things. I retreated to my room which, though I was too busy to realize it at the time had been switched to be in the light instead of the dark, and stayed there forcing myself to have no influence on Thomas at all. It was actually pretty hard. Imagine forcing yourself not to breathe when your every instinct is to breathe before you suffocate. But you’re right on that edge of being able to stay focused and not being forced to breathe yet. So you don’t. That’s what it was like. I didn’t need to do it, I could hold back, but I’m a part of Thomas just like all the rest and a lot of our influence is completely unconscious and constant like breathing is. We can focus on it and make it happen or stop or change but most of the time we don’t.  


It was then that everyone came to my room looking for me and I realized my room was no longer in the dark. I guess everyone else had just known like they’d known when my name switched but I hadn’t been paying enough attention to notice so it was a shock that anyone besides Remus and Deceit could even get into my room in what I assumed was too deep in the subconscious for them to go without help in one form or another, unlike me Deceit and Remus, but yet here they were and with Thomas no less. It was when I realized that was impossible and this must be the lighter closer to the surface of Thomas’s mind area that Patton, Roman, and Logan lived that I had it pop into my head again. Was I one of them?

The video continued from there and well. If you’re reading this, I'm sure you know how the story goes so I’ll skip over all of that. But in the end, Thomas accepted his anxiety, accepted me, and so did all the rest. All of us realized I may hurt Thomas without meaning to sometimes but unlike Remus and Deceit who were hidden from Thomas at the time by Deceit and had been since he started making videos under my request because I was scared what Thomas’s fans might think if they knew about them, I wasn’t that bad. Deceit… Well, he wasn’t happy about the changes that had occurred. He wasn’t happy that I wasn’t spending so much time in the dark anymore. He didn’t like that I was getting along with who I was. And he didn’t like that my room had moved one bit. He took it out on me later that day towards the night time and well… Things weren’t pretty and I lost the one person who had stuck with me through everything and had helped me so much when I was younger and up to that point in my adulthood. I was devastated at the time and I guess someone must’ve known what had happened or figured it out somehow because not long after I had all three of my new friends calling me out into the common space they shared in the light for chats without anyone’s rooms influencing anyone and offering me Patton baked cookies and a Tim Burton marathon through Thomas’s eyes. It was then as I stepped out to be greeted by smiles and comfort from Patton, Logan, and even Roman that I realized the truth. I was one of them.


End file.
